The Dying Earth Quotes

“Living creatures, if nothing else, have the right to life. It is their only truly precious possession, and the stealing of life is a wicked theft”
― Jack Vance, Mazirian the Magician

“But even in my life I saw the leaching of spirit. A surfeit of honey cloys the tongue; a surfeit of wine addles the brain; so a surfeit of ease guts a man of strength. Light, warmth, food, water, were free to all men, and gained by a minimum of effort. So the people of Ampridatvir, released from toil, gave increasing attention to faddishness, perversity, and the occult.”
― Jack Vance, Mazirian the Magician

“I hate you with the hate that I give to all the world; I love you with a feeling nothing else arouses.”
― Jack Vance, Mazirian the Magician

“What great minds lie in the dust,” said Guyal in a low voice. “What gorgeous souls have vanished into the buried ages; what marvellous creatures are lost past the remotest memory … Nevermore will there be the like; now in the last fleeting moments, humanity festers rich as rotten fruit. Rather than master and overpower our world, our highest aim is to cheat it through sorcery.”
― Jack Vance, Mazirian the Magician

“Day and far into the opalescent Embelyon night [Turjan of Miir] worked under Pandelume's unseen tutelage. He learned the secret of renewed youth, many spells of the ancients, and a strange abstract lore that Pandelume termed 'Mathematics.' "Within this instrument," said Pandelume, "resides the Universe. Passive in itself and not of sorcery, it elucidates every problem, each phase of existence, all the secrets of time and space. Your spells and runes are built upon its power and codified according to a great underlying mosaic of magic. The design of this mosaic we cannot surmise; our knowledge is didactic, empirical, arbitrary. Phandaal glimpsed the pattern and so was able to formulate many of the spells which bear his name. I have endeavored through the ages to break the clouded glass, but so far my research has failed. He who discovers the pattern will know all of sorcery and be a man powerful beyond comprehension.”
― Jack Vance, The Dying Earth

“You are evil like all existence. ... If power were mine I would crush the universe to bloody gravel and stamp into the ultimate muck!”
― Jack Vance, The Dying Earth

“An enemy, perhaps. Ah, so simple. Liane will kill you ten men. Two steps forward, thrust — thus!” He lunged. “And souls go thrilling up like bubbles in a beaker of mead.”
― Jack Vance, Mazirian the Magician

“Death is the heritage of life; a man’s vitality is like air in a bladder. Poinct this bubble and away, away, away, flees life, like the color of fading dream.”
― Jack Vance, Mazirian the Magician

“A surfeit of honey cloys the tongue; a surfeit of wine addles the brain; so a surfeit of ease guts a man of strength.”
― Jack Vance, Mazirian the Magician

“T’sain shrugged. “I have lived little, and I am not wise. Yet I know that everyone is entitled to life.”
― Jack Vance, Mazirian the Magician

“It is thus because it has always been thus. Is not this reason enough?”
― Jack Vance, The Dying Earth

“My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance.”
― Jack Vance, The Dying Earth

“On the heights above the river Xzan, at the site of certain ancient ruins, Iucounu the Laughing Magician had built a manse to his private taste: an eccentric structure of steep gables, balconies, sky-walks, cupolas, together with three spiral green glass towers through which the red sunlight shone in twisted glints and peculiar colors.”
― Jack Vance, The Eyes of the Overworld

“Hold, hold, hold!" came a new voice. "Hold, hold, hold. My charms and tokens, an ill day for Thorsingol ... But then, avaunt, you ghost, back to the orifice, back and avaunt, avaunt, I say! Go, else I loose the actinics; trespass is not allowed, by supreme command from the Lycurgat; aye, the Lycurgat of Thorsingol. Avaunt, so then.”
― Jack Vance, The Dying Earth

“To the furthest reach of my memory, Rogol Domedonfors ruled the city. He knew lore of all ages, secrets of fire and light, gravity and countergravity, the knowledge of superphysic numeration, metathasm, corolopsis.”
― Jack Vance, The Dying Earth

“T'sais mounted her horse and set out for Earth, seeking love and beauty.”
― Jack Vance, The Dying Earth

“Within this instrument,” said Pandelume, “resides the Universe.”
― Jack Vance, The Dying Earth